Jeffrey Goldberg to speak at first Foggle Great Issues Lecture at Temple Beth El

SPRINGFIELD – Temple Beth El will launch its Bill & Lynn Foggle Great Issues Lecture Series on April 29 when The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg comes to Springfield to speak.

A reception will be held from 4 – 4:30 p.m. The lecture is set to begin at 4:30 p.m., followed by a Q&A and a book signing at 6 p.m.

With this lecture, the Foggles, longtime community leaders and philanthropists, are creating a first-time opportunity that will be accessible and free to the public. Their goal is to secure a world-class speaker annually who will stimulate thought and lively exploration of ideas about today’s most challenging global issues.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have been able to attract as the Series’ first speaker Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and a ‘superstar’ journalist known for his coverage of world affairs.

He is certain to set a high bar for future speakers,” Bill Foggle said.

Chairing the April 29th program is Josh Weiss, an active member of Temple Beth El and a professor recognized widely as a negotiation and conflict resolution specialist. Weiss said that Goldberg will speak on “The Current State of Affairs of the U.S. vis-à-vis the World Around Us.”

Goldberg is editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, a columnist for Bloomberg View, and one of America’s leading commentators on foreign policy, national security and the Middle East. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamist terrorism; the Daniel Pearl Prize for Reporting; the Abraham Cahan Prize; and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for best investigative reporter. Most recently, Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) presented Jeffrey with the 2016 Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting.

He is a former Middle East correspondent and former Washington correspondent of The New Yorker, and a former contributing editor at The New York Times Magazine. Earlier, he covered the Mafia for New York Magazine, and he began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post, for which he covered the crack epidemic of the early 1990s. Goldberg’s reporting has taken him across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. He has reported from Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In his travels, he has interviewed leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Islamic Jihad. He has been kidnapped twice while reporting on terrorism, and has covered numerous wars, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as civil wars across Africa. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.